“This is DC Fred Lescott of New South Wales Police. I’m going to need a squad car, and an ambulance at 760 Bellevue Hill. Shots fired, two officers down.” Lescott looked down at his wound. It was oozing blood all over the floor. “Nothing life threatening. I’ve been shot in the knee. My superior has severe burns to the face and neck.” Lescott placed a cigarette between clenched teeth and lit it. His knee was burning. He felt quite sick. He looked over at Barstow who, to his credit, was trying and succeeding to stand up. It’s not an easy thing to do, standing up when half your face is lying in a puddle on the floor next to you. “Also… I think my colleague might have been gutshot.”
Lescott put the phone down and watched Barstow groaning with arms outstretched, he looked like he was trying to escape the scene. He was just blindly bumping into furniture and the walls.
Lescott raised his gun and shut one eye to combat the dizziness he was battling due to blood loss. He kept Barstow in his sights for a moment and then pulled the trigger. Barstow, now gutshot, folded like a deckchair.
Chapter 28
Lescott awoke to a familiar throbbing pain in his knee. The doctors had removed the bullet without incident but it felt as though something had been left floating around behind his patella. Since his confrontation with Barstow, not a single day had passed, where it had not given him trouble. It seemed to get worse every time he relived the encounter in his nightmares.
Once he’d acclimatised to the pain in his knee, he realised just how damn hot it was in the car. This wasn’t the humid heat he was used to in coastal New South Wales. This was a dry, desert heat. They were approaching Australia’s arid red centre. After giving his eyes a rub, he looked out at the expansive dust bowl beyond the window and guessed they had made it as far as northwest Victoria, perhaps somewhere around Mildura.
He’d woken up in a sweat, the car was completely airless. Harris had refused to make use of the air conditioning. He said it blew recycled filth in your face while it took cool air away from the engine. Of course he did. Lescott lowered the window, hoping to breathe a little easier but when he did, his face was met by a wall of hot air.
It took him a moment to come to his senses and figure out that he was alone in the vehicle and it was stationary. It had been parked at the bowser of a petrol station. Harris was nowhere to be seen. Lescott reached down for his cigarettes and lit one. Smoking in that dusty dry heat was unpleasant. The toxic fumes coated his mouth and scratched at the back of his throat before sliding down into his lungs. Lescott had never enjoyed the heat. He’d always sought out shade. That would prove harder to do the further they travelled from Sydney. It was an expansive red clay oven with a clear blue sky that sprawled endlessly. There was nowhere to hide, no towering buildings, no vast bridges, nor luscious green trees. Out there in that untouched and ancient land, there was only sun and sunburn.
Inside the service station, Harris was using the payphone when he saw Lescott wake up like a madman and begin fanning himself dramatically. They’d been driving the best part of two arduous days. Conversation hadn’t exactly flowed. There’s no test of a relationship like sleep deprivation and a confined space. Both men were in dire need of some elbow room. The car didn’t need fuel. Harris just wanted to get away from Lescott, who had been making strange, pained sounds in his sleep.
It wasn’t any cooler inside the station. The Englishman had taken his tie off, loosened his collar, and rolled up his sleeves. He loathed to do so, given it revealed his track-marked arms; but it was fucking sweltering. The service station attendant had noticed the blemishes and silently labelled Harris a junkie; that sort of thing makes for an uncomfortable situation. The poor man must have been absolutely aware that they were miles and miles from the nearest police presence. He fidgeted behind the counter and kept looking down at the shotgun below him. Out of the corner of his eye, Harris could see the bizarre ballet that the man was performing on a loop, and it was making it difficult to concentrate. It only stopped when Harris removed the revolver from his belt and placed it on top of the phone console. The attendant quickly retreated to a backroom.
“I don’t know Ron… Given my present company, that might be a bit awkward.” Harris looked out of the window to see Lescott was smoking. His arm was dangling out the window holding the lit cigarette. Right next to the petrol bowser. “He seems… I don’t know.” Prince continued to speak on the other end of the phone; he was the sort of guy who’d talk until he got his way. He didn’t usually need to talk for very long. “Ok, I’m on my way.”
Harris put the phone down and looked out at the heat haze in the distance. It couldn’t have been more different from where he’d grown up in Salford. At this time of the year, that landscape of industry would have been covered in a thick layer of snow. He wondered to himself if he’d ever walk down the cobbled streets of Ancoats again, those he’d trod as a barefoot child. He wondered if he’d see his family again. He wondered if they were still alive.
Harris put his sunglasses on, combed his hair back with his palm, and placed his revolver back into his waistband. He rang the bell at the counter but no one was stepping forwards. The big, burly standover man was used to having that kind of effect on people. When he walked Sydney’s streets in his long overcoat and his flat cap pulled low, men crossed the street to avoid an encounter with him. Even those without prior knowledge of his reputation, could sense it. Harris took it upon himself to cross the street when he noticed women and children approaching. He wasn’t unaware of the effect he had on people. Being the strange, sensitive sort of soul that he was, he often likened himself to Frankenstein’s Monster; his villainy was born of other men, yet there was a gentle soul underneath it all. When he wasn’t robbing and murdering, he was something of an enigma.
After a moment the attendant slipped back in, perhaps he had thought Harris had left; he hadn’t. He stood there impatiently waiting for service, ringing a desk bell. “Sorry, I was just on the phone to the local constable, he’s a regular, he’s usually been in for his lunch by now. He was asking me to knock up a sandwich, he’ll be here in just a moment.” Whether the man was nervously lying or not was unimportant, it brought a smile to Harris’ face regardless.
“I’ve been in the car for two days. I need something to keep me awake. You wouldn’t happen to have any coke, would you?” Harris asked politely as though he was asking the man to make him a sandwich.
It’s often said that great minds think much alike. But no two minds think more alike than those of a pair of addicts. As Harris got back into the car with a sleeve of cigarettes and two cans of coca cola, he found Lescott with his face in a wrap of cocaine. “I got you a coke. It’s not exactly what I was asking for, but it’s cold.” Harris passed it to Lescott who held it to his forehead.
“That’s exactly what I need right now.” Lescott carelessly tossed the wrap onto the dashboard and snatched the cold can. He gratefully and pressed it against his forehead, meticulously ensuring every drop of cold condensation made its way to his dehydrated skin.
Harris took a share-and-share-alike approach to friendship and picked up the wrap of cocaine. Instead of tipping a little on the dashboard, he just held it to his nose and took a generous snort. If Lescott was heading into the desert stoned, Harris wasn’t about to go sober.
Then he remembered the conversation he’d just had with Prince. “Fuck. We need to make a stop.” Harris adjusted the rear-view mirror and wiped the powder from his nostrils in the hope that it made him look too busy to answer any questions Lescott had.
It didn’t. “What? Where? Why?”
“A girl was raped in an Adelaide club last night.”
“That sounds like a job for SAPOL.” Lescott frowned as he looked down at his drink and realised it would produce no more cold condensation. He had been considering whether placing it in his perspiration drenched armpits might be a bridge too far.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. It was one of Ronnie Prince’s clubs.” Harris felt
a little awkward, he was requesting that Lescott delay his hunt for a cruel murderer in order to get involved in organised crime.
Lescott mulled over the situation. He knew there was a lot about Harris that he didn’t know. If he didn’t ask, he wouldn’t put Harris in a position where he needed to lie, or even worse, tell the truth. If it had nothing to do with the killer, they just didn’t need to discuss it. “I’m guessing this is non-negotiable. So, I’m not about to start negotiating.” Lescott began to play with the dials of the radio, and a popular jolting piano introduction filled the car. “Ha, what are the odds? Hit the road, Jack.”
“Jack?” Harris was nonplussed. He didn’t listen to modern music.
“Just drive, you fucking philistine.” The car pulled away from that desolate petrol station in northwest Victoria, kicking up dust as it began to consume the road between them and the City of Churches.
It was a sad indictment of the state of the police force that Lescott’s best option for help was from a known criminal with little experience in the investigative arts. Sadder still, said criminal was invoicing the New South Wales Police Force at an exorbitant day rate, plus expenses that included drink and drugs. Saddest of all, the pair were taking a detour to dispose of the body of a murdered rapist.
They made good progress in the hours that followed, and they pulled into the thriving South Australian city just in time for lunch. It was a beautiful place. Gone was the depression of the 1930’s, the fear of the 1940’s and the austerity of the 1950’s. Adelaide was flourishing. It was yet to become overcrowded like Sydney or Melbourne. It was far more respectable, and far less lawless, than Brisbane. With its smaller and better behaved population it felt less full, less polluted, and less dangerous than the cities on the east coast.
The city’s renaissance was not without its downsides. Crime was slowly taking a foothold. Locals were becoming more and more frustrated by the ever rising levels of wrongdoing in the city. You see, crime was like the gold rush sweeping through a new country. Sydney’s time came first, then Melbourne, then Brisbane. Every city was a new frontier offering fresh and lucrative opportunities to those who mapped it first. Adelaide had managed to stay clean for quite some time. But when Ronnie Prince honeymooned in Adelaide in the 1950’s, he noticed a distinct lack of organised crime in the area. And H
he made it his mission to get about organising some.
It was in Adelaide that Prince had come across an aimless young hardman named James Harris. As Prince’s man drove through the streets now, he did so assuredly. He kept his eyes on the storefronts and the hoodlums hanging around outside them. He recognised them to a man. It seemed the fear that had gripped Sydney in the face of Prince’s imminent demise had not swept across to the south just yet.
Lescott, on the other hand, was looking at the city with a brand-new pair of eyes. He hadn’t been to Adelaide since he was a child. He barely remembered the place, it had grown a great deal in the post war years. He did, however, recognise that they were driving in circles when they passed St Peter’s Cathedral for the fourth time. “Are we lost?”
“God no. This place is kind of my Australian hometown. I came to Adelaide before I came to Sydney. Prince found me while I was working the doors. Before that I did a stretch on the shipyards in Whyalla.”
“You worked in the shipyards?” Lescott looked a little surprised that Harris had worked in such a taxing environment. It was a hard life and Harris had demonstrated a fondness for taking the easy way out wherever possible.
“I was involved in the union…”
“Of course you were,” Lescott laughed, the image of Harris working the shipyards had gone into Lescott’s mind like a square peg in a round hole, but the image of Harris cracking heads on a picket line… well that fit like the proverbial glass slipper.
While the car was stopped at a set of lights, the street side backdoor swung open and a big old girl began climbing onto the back seat. Lescott barely looked around. “Sorry love, this isn’t a cab.” When the woman took her weight off her trailing foot, the car shifted dramatically with a squeak of its suspension. “Jesus fucking Christ…”
“Don’t you take that man’s name in vain, young man. The things he went through, for your sins…” the woman scolded. Harris kept looking ahead, completely unphased but Lescott turned to see where the booming voice and throaty chortle had come from. Sat on the back seat was a monster of a woman who was the absolute embodiment of “Larger than life.” What struck Lescott first was her smile, it was gigantic. Not only was her mouth huge, it was filled with enormous teeth that seemed to be in far higher numbers than the norm. As she threw her head back and laughed a deep, chesty laugh, Lescott found himself staring up her cavernous nostrils. They were of such a size that the postal service ought to have designated each of them with their own postcode. The hair on her oversized head was a sight to behold, a frizzy black mass making her look like some kind of gothic palm tree. And her cleavage… If they hadn’t yet searched it for Amelia Earhart, well they really ought to have done so. Never mind the Lockheed Electra, you could have lost an oil tanker down there.
“Sorry, I didn’t realise that…” Lescott looked from the woman to Harris and noticed the tell-tale signs of amusement on his pale face. “You two know each other?”
“Fred Lescott, Lydia Ramsey. Lydia Ramsey, Fred Lescott.” Harris kept his eyes on the lights. When they turned green, he pulled away.
Moments later, Harris and Lescott took an arm each and helped Lydia out of the back seat of the somewhat flattened BMW. It wasn’t the easiest task either man would perform that week. In fact, it occurred to Lescott that the pair of them must have looked much like a set of struggling Japanese whalers hauling in the catch of a lifetime.
The trio dusted themselves off and put the embarrassing scene behind them before entering the Carousel club, heading straight to the bar. Lescott and Lydia took the weight off their feet on the stools there. Lescott tried to stop himself thinking of the strain that poor stool was under as it propped that glorious behemoth up. Harris on the other hand remained standing and business-like. The manager’s attention was focused upon a television behind the bar. He’d seen them walk in, but he was performing a misguided silent protest. It was his day off. Coming into his place of business on his day off felt much like an inconvenience. He was sulking.
Lescott was in awe of the venue. He’d been in similar establishments in Sydney and Melbourne, but they weren’t like this. While the clubs, casinos and brothels of the larger state capitals were garish, this was classy. Similar establishments in Sydney and Melbourne were harshly lit by neon and invasive spotlighting, but this was softly and exquisitely lit by chandeliers and candlelight. Where the walls of establishments in Darlinghurst or Saint Kilda were covered in tacky, burgundy velvet wallpaper, these walls were all exposed brickwork and beautifully treated timber. This place felt less like a pimp’s idea of luxury and more like actual luxury. An exercise in fine art, more than an exercise in tawdry capitalism.
It’s safe to say Lescott was enjoying himself. Harris not. His patience was wearing thin with the venue manager. When Harris whistled sharply, the man turned towards him wearing a petulant expression. “Is it out the back?”
“Kitchen.” The response did little to hide the manager’s disdain for the situation. Harris looked over, not as a friend nor a colleague but as a problem that needed solving. He gestured for Lydia to go and check out the kitchen. She walked off. Harris looked back at DS Fred Lescott and asked, “You hungry?”
“I’m ok actually. The car ride left my stomach a bit unsettled.”
“You’re hungry,” Harris ignored the answer and turned to the manager. “Can you do us some breakfast?”
“Kitchen’s closed.”
“Then find one that’s not. Dickhead,” Harris snapped. At the best of times, the success of this kind of situation required cooperation. Throw a detective into the mix and you’ve got a really tenuous situation on your hands.<
br />
Lescott watched Harris dealing with the employee, it was the first he’d seen of James Harris the efficient standover man, there was steel in his eyes. The manager began to walk off with his tail between his legs, Harris stopped him in his tracks with another shrill whistle, “There’s a sauerkraut wagon parked out front, bring it into the alley out back. Quickly.”
Once the manager had gone, Harris looked over towards the doors into the kitchen. He couldn’t trust the manager to keep Lescott busy, he needed a different kind of distraction. “Beer?”
Before Lescott could answer, the kitchen door swung open. Out walked Lydia Ramsey, enjoying a demented kind of chuckle to herself. “Looks like a kangaroo jumped into a ceiling fan in there.” She chortled again.
Lescott looked at Lydia and then to Harris. “I think I better have that beer. Maybe a whisky chaser too. When Lydia sat back down next to Lescott, he gave her a strained smile. Given Harris’ eyes kept wandering over to the door into the kitchen, it didn’t take a detective to see that Harris was going to leave him alone with this woman. The prospect did little for Fred Lescott; the chuckling woman left him feeling quite uneasy. “Do you need a hand? With… whatever it is you’re doing?”
Harris, behind the bar pouring a pint, understood the true meaning of the question at once, and smiled. He slid the beer and a large whisky towards Lescott. “You’ll be alright. Just help yourself to drinks. Lydia here cleans crime scenes for SAPOL. I’m sure you two can find some common ground.”
Lydia smiled. She was pleased with her line of work, and she was yet more pleased to be spending her day surrounded by handsome young men. “It’s a family business. It started with my granddaddy back in Mount Gambier before the turn of the century. Now we’re Adelaide’s best and most professional cleaners. My old man ran it before me. One day my daughter might end up scraping me off the pavement.”
THE DEVIL IN THE RED DIRT: DIVIDED IN LIFE. UNIFIED IN MURDER Page 24